SquareTrade has surveyed 30,000 laptops. The result shows that netbooks has 20 per cent more hardware failures than laptops with a big screen. Also, one in three machines die in a matter of three years.

The failure rates according to the article at The Register are:
Acer – 23.3%
Apple – 17.4%
Dell – 18.3%
HP – 25.6%
Lenovo – 21.5%
Sony and Toshiba – between 15.6% to 17.4%

Premium machines only have an 18.1% failure rate. SquareTrade notes that Netbooks are new in the market so it will be interesting to follow how reliable they are over the years.

Source: The Register